Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Take Action

An explosive new profanity-laced audio recording obtained by The Nation
showing the NYPD performing a particularly aggressive and racially
charged stop-and-frisk of a 16-year-old Harlem student is generating an
uproar and fueling renewed efforts to end the controversial practice.
Today, in New York’s City Council, members are debating proposals
aimed at halting the NYPD’s hundreds of thousands of “stop-and-frisk”
stops each year. After years of complaints that the stops are racially
discriminatory, the hearings signal that the public debate has gotten
loud enough that lawmakers feel they have to be a part of it, whether
they want to join the chorus of critics or defend the program.

TO DO

The Community Safety Act is a landmark police reform legislative
package currently pending in the New York City Council that consists of
four bills aimed at ending discriminatory policing. If you’re a New York
City resident, implore your local reps to support the CSA.
If you’re not, please share this post with any friends, family or
Facebook and Twitter contacts who may live in NYC. All US residents
should demand that their senators support the End Racial Profiling Act, which could also put “stop-and-frisk” out of business.

TO READ

Writing in The Nation last June, David Cole explained
why the vast majority of stop-and-frisks are never subjected to
judicial review: because most stops don’t lead to arrests. Thus, these
encounters are not “policed” by courts the way arrests are. And not
surprisingly, when police officers—like anyone else—know they are not
being watched, they are likely to cut corners.

Exclusive audio obtained by The Nation of a stop-and-frisk
carried out by the New York Police Department freshly reveals the
discriminatory and unprofessional way in which this controversial policy
is being implemented on the city’s streets.

On June 3, 2011, three plainclothes New York City Police officers
stopped a Harlem teenager named Alvin and two of the officers questioned
and frisked him while the third remained in their unmarked car. Alvin
secretly captured the interaction on his cell phone, and the resulting
audio is one of the only known recordings of stop-and-frisk in action.
In the course of the two-minute recording, the officers give no
legally valid reason for the stop, use racially charged language and
threaten Alvin with violence. Early in the stop, one of the officers
asks, “You want me to smack you?” When Alvin asks why he is being
threatened with arrest, the other officer responds, “For being a fucking
mutt.” Later in the stop, while holding Alvin’s arm behind his back,
the first officer says, “Dude, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ arm, then
I’m gonna punch you in the fuckin’ face.” Listen to the full audio of the stop:

It looks like you don’t have Adobe Flash Player installed. Get it now.

“He grabbed me by my bookbag and he started pushing me down. So I’m
going backwards like down the hill and he just kept pushing me, pushing
me, it looked like he we was going to hit me,” Alvin recounts. “I felt
like they was trying to make me resist or fight back.”
Alvin’s treatment at the hands of the officers may be disturbing but
it is not uncommon. According to their own stop-and-frisk data, the NYPD
stops more than 1,800 New Yorkers a day. A New York Times
analysis recently determined that more than 20 percent of those stops
involve the use of force. And these are only the numbers that the
Department records. Anecdotal evidence suggests both figures are much
higher.
In this video, exclusive to TheNation.com, Alvin describes his
experience of the stop, and working NYPD officers come forward to
explain the damage stop-and-frisk has done to their profession and their
relationship to the communities they serve. The emphasis on racking up
stops has also hindered what many officers consider to be the real work
they should be doing on the streets. The video sheds unprecedented light
on a practice, cheered on by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police
Commissioner Ray Kelly, that has put the city’s young people of color in
the department’s crosshairs.
Those who haven’t experienced the policy first-hand “have likened
Stops to being stuck in an elevator, or in traffic,” says Darius
Charney, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“This is not merely an inconvenience, as the Department likes to
describe it. This is men with guns surrounding you in the street late at
night when you’re by yourself. You ask why and they curse you out and
rough you up.”
“The tape brings to light what so many New Yorkers have experienced
in the shadows at the hands of the NYPD,” says Ben Jealous, President of
the NAACP. “It is time for Mayor Bloomberg to come to grips with the
scale of the damage his policies have inflicted on our children and
their families. No child should have to grow up fearing both the cops
and the robbers.”
“This audio confirms what we’ve been hearing from communities of
color, again and again,” says Donna Lieberman, executive director of the
NYCLU. “They are repeatedly subjected to abusive and disrespectful
treatment at the hands of the NYPD. This explains why so many young
people don’t trust the police and won’t help the police,” she adds.
“It’s not good for law enforcement and not good for the individuals who
face this harassment.”
The audio also betrays the seeming arbitrariness of stops and the
failure of some police officers to fully comprehend or be able to
articulate a clear motivation for carrying out a practice they’re asked
to repeat on a regular basis.
And, according to Charney, the only thing the police officers do with
clarity during this stop is announce its unconstitutionality.
“We’ve long been claiming that, under this department’s
administration, if you’re a young black or Latino kid, walking the
street at night you’re automatically a suspicious person,” says Charney,
who is leading a class-action lawsuit challenging the NYPD’s
stop-and-frisk practices. “The police deny those claims, when asked.
‘No, that’s not the reason we’re stopping them.’ But they’re actually
admitting it here [on the audio recording]. The only reason they give
is: ‘You were looking back at us…’ That does not rise to the level of
reasonable suspicion, and there’s a clear racial animus when they call
him a ‘mutt.’”
The audio was recently played at a meeting of The Morris Justice
Project, a group of Bronx residents who have organized around the issue
of stop-and-frisk and have been compiling data on people’s interactions
with police. Jackie Robinson, mother of two boys, expected not to be
surprised when told about the contents of the recording. “It’s stuff
we’ve all heard before,” she said at the gathering. Yet Robinson visibly
shuddered at one of the audio’s most violent passages. She had heard
plenty about these encounters, but had never actually listened to one in
action.
“As a mother, it bothers you,” says Robinson. “The police are the
ones we’re supposed to turn to when something bad happens. Of all the
things I have to worry about when my kids walk out the door, I don’t
want to have to worry about them being harmed by the police. It makes
you feel like you can’t protect your children. Something has to be
done.”
Officers who carry out such belligerent stops face little
accountability under the NYPD’s current structure. The department is one
of New York City’s last agencies to operate without independent
oversight, leaving officers with no safe place to file complaints about
police practice and systemic problems.
“An independent inspector general would be in a position to review
NYPD policies and practices—like the recorded stop-and-frisk shown
here—to see whether the police are violating New Yorkers’ rights and
whether the program is in fact yielding benefits,” says the Brennan
Center’s Faiza Patel. “An inspector general would not hinder the NYPD’s
ability to fight crime, but would help build a stronger, more effective
force.”
NYPD spokespeople have said that stop-and-frisk is necessary to keep
crime down and guns off the street. But those assertions are
increasingly being contradicted by the department’s own officers, who
are beginning to speak out about a pervasive culture of number-chasing.
Two officers from two different precincts in two separate boroughs spoke to The Nation
about the same types of pressures put on officers to meet numerical
goals or face disciplinary action and retaliation. Most chillingly, both
officers use the word “hunt” when describing the relentless quest for
summonses, stops and arrests.
“The civilian population, they’re being hunted by us,” says an
officer with more than ten years on the job. “Instead of being protected
by us, they’re being hunted and we’re being hated.”
The focus on numbers, and the rewards for those who meet quotas has
created an atmosphere, another veteran officer says, in which cops
compete to see who can get the highest numbers, and it can lead to the
kind of arbitrary stop that quickly became violent in this recording.
“It’s really bad,” says the officer after listening to the audio
recording. “It’s not a good thing at all. But it’s really common, I’m
sorry to say. It doesn’t have to be like that.”
Lieberman from the NYCLU agrees: “It’s time for the Mayor and the
Police Commissioner to stop trying to scare New Yorkers into accepting
this kind of abuse, and to recognize that there is a problem.”Additional reporting by Erin Schneider. To see this and other related media, go to: facebook.com/stopandfriskmedia or e-mail stopandfriskmedia at gmail dot com

City Council hearing on NYPD's controversial stop and frisk policy devolves into racially charged argument

Councilwoman Helen Foster tells Councilman Peter Vallone that she's not one of his 'boys'

Published: Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 1:10 PM

Updated: Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 6:24 PM

Craig Warga/New York Daily News

Councilman Peter Vallone, Jr. testifies during hearings on the NYPD's
controversial stop and frisk tactics at City Council Chambers at City
Hall on October 10th, 2012.

A City Council hearing Wednesday on the NYPD’s controversial
stop-and-frisk policy degenerated into a racially charged shouting match
with a black councilmember telling her white colleague, “I’m not one of
your boys.”
The tempers flared after City Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan)
argued that the policy of stopping hundreds of thousands of mostly black
residents is a form of profiling.
Jackson specifically cited an audiotape, recently posted on the website
of The Nation magazine, that captured cops calling a stopped Harlem
teen, “a f---king mutt.”
Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens), who is chairman of the Public
Safety Committee that was holding the packed hearing, interrupted
Jackson to tell him to stop making speeches.
That’s when Councilwoman Helen Foster (D-Bronx) jumped in, accusing
Vallone, a frequent defender of the NYPD, of not following that very
rule.
Vallone tried to respond, but Foster cut him off.
“I don’t work for you. I am not one of your boys,” she said. “You will not talk to me like that.”

Craig Warga/New York Daily News

Council Speaker Christine Quinn helped Vallone quiet the crowd, which
burst into a mixture of laughter and applause. Foster then suggested
that Vallone may understand how emotional the debate was for some
council members if he were black.
“If his father were an 88-year-old man who’s being pulled over and
being called a ‘boy’ and fitting a description, then it would be
different,” Foster said.
Before the fireworks, the committee was mulling four bills that would
reform stop-and-frisk policies. One would require cops to actively
inform people of a widely unknown right not to consent to a search when
stopped.
Another would create an Inspector General for the NYPD.
Mayor Bloomberg’s counsel Michael Best accused the council of trying to supercede state law.
“These issues are governed entirely by state law — specifically the
criminal procedure law, which sets forth the powers of police officers
in these areas,” Best testified.
Best also warned that one bill, which allows payment of attorneys’ fees
and expert fees to victims of any law enforcement activity, could bring
enormous costs to taxpayers if passed.
Vallone agreed.
“It will blow a massive hole in the city budget and end NYPD policing
as we know it by taking control of the NYPD from Ray Kelly and give it
to judges,” he said.
NYPD brass declined to testify.